Nicole Herz

Artist's Statement: New York Paintings

Architectural elements, especially rooftops, play a personified role in the New York works of painter Nicole Herz. Herz explains, “My paintings depict the smaller skyline of New York City. They are inspired by the rooftops of the 19th century industrial-era factory buildings and smaller-scale residences of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. On the roofs of these older buildings, I find complex relationships among the shapes, hues and textures of water towers, skylights, chimneys, vents and antennas.”

Through simplification, abstraction and the editing of color, composition and form, she isolates the objects and highlights their relationships to each other and to the sky. Herz says, “By reinterpreting the scene, I create a personal mood of place and time that expresses my most intimate reaction to the subjects.” Her work is primarily small in scale—further interpreting her personal connection to the cityscapes she creates.

Maine Paintings

Herz's interest in the simplification and abstraction of form continued to manifest itself in her paintings of rural Maine. In her early Maine paintings, she explores the worlds she finds both inside and reflected in the windows of abandoned houses and barns. Once inhabited and full of life, these old houses and barns now exist on their own terms, still and sculpture-like. The abstraction of the structures celebrates the fundamental beauty of their form while evoking the lingering presence of past inhabitants.

Her most recent work explores how the colors, textures and forms of both man-made structures, and natural structures-trees, relate to the same elements in the landscape that surrounds them. By reinterpreting the scene, I create a personal mood of place and time that expresses my most intimate reaction to the subjects.

On July 29, 2008, Herz lost 15 paintings in a fire at the Wingspread Gallery in Northeast Harbor, Maine. This was a devastating loss, not only because of the quantity, but because the paintings consisted of most of her current, available work. Many of these paintings were inspired by houses that have been since torn down. These paintings memorialized these old structures that are vanishing from our landscape. Now the paintings are gone, too. All 15 paintings can be viewed on the website.

Nicole's recent work may be seen at the Asticou Connection Gallery in Bar Harbor (Town Hill), Maine.

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